Driverless car “nearly killed me” – Clarkson

Jeremy Clarkson has told how he was nearly killed twice in a matter of minutes while trying out the technology.

The Sunday Times reports that the Grand Tour host was trying out the semi-autonomous car on a motorway and the outing was “nearly his last”.

“I drove a car the other day which has a claim of autonomous capability and twice in the space of 50 miles on the M4 it made a mistake, a huge mistake, which could have resulted in death,” he told the newspaper’s magazine. “We have to be very careful legally, so I’m not going to say which one.”

Clarkson said the incidents convinced him the technology was still “a very long way off”.

In The Sunday Times Magazine he challenges the boss of Audi, which next year is set to start selling the most advanced autonomous car of its kind: “You drive one of your driverless cars over the Death Road in Bolivia and I’ll buy one. Sit there with your hands folded and let it drive you up there, then squeeze past a lorry with half the tyre hanging over a 1,000ft drop while the car drives itself. Fine, I’ll buy into it.”